Individual Creativity during the Ideation Phase of Product Innovation: An Interactional Perspective

Although there is increasing acknowledgement that employees' creative ideas are fundamental for product innovation, and many companies use cross‐functional teams to increase employee creativity, there has been little empirical testing of how individual personality and group context interactively affect individual creativity. The purpose of this study is threefold: to examine the relationship between personality and individual creativity; to assess how this relationship interacts with group diversity; and to determine whether the interaction effects between personality traits and gender diversity are mediated by individual knowledge sharing. The results of an experiment based on a sample of 142 working adults show that openness to experience and extraversion are positively related to individual creativity, whereas neuroticism and conscientiousness are negatively related to individual creativity. Furthermore, the impacts of openness to experience and extraversion on individual creativity, respectively, are moderated by both functional diversity and gender diversity. In addition, these interaction effects are mediated by individual knowledge sharing. Interestingly, this study also finds that the direction of functional diversity's moderating effects depends on the level of group diversity.     

Assessing Job Candidates' Creativity: Propositions and Future Research Directions

Identifying and selecting creative employees is of key importance in today's high‐pace business environment. Yet, little is known about how assessors in organizational settings evaluate the creative potential of job candidates. In this paper we review the extant literature on individual and team creativity in order to identify criteria (cues) against which job candidates' creativity could be assessed. We argue that the creative potential of job candidates could be evaluated against four key dimensions (the creative individual, the creative product, the creative process and the creative environment) and call for empirical research to further explore and test our propositions in practice.     

A Social Network Perspective of Lead Users and Creativity: An Empirical Study among Children

Generating ideas at the ‘fuzzy front end’ of new product development is risky and has serious consequences for all preceding development stages. One of the currently most prominent techniques in supporting this idea‐generation stage is the lead user approach. Involving lead users in idea generation closely correlates to individual creativity, and both, in turn, to the provision of information in social networks. This study, guided by lead user theory, creativity research and network theory, investigates 16 school‐groups of children examining the relationship between the children's social networks and their resulting creativity and lead userness. In addition, the interplay between lead userness and creativity is discussed and empirically tested. The main result of this study is that children who are positioned as bridging links between different groups in social networks reveal both a high degree of lead userness and a high level of creativity.     

Stimulating the Potential: Creative Performance and Communication in Innovation Teams

Creativity is essential to successful new product development efforts. Teams constitute the organizing principle in most modern innovation activities. Although creativity research has revealed many factors influencing individual creativity, little is known about how team‐level creativity is determined. Since the creative innovation task requires teams to combine and integrate input from multiple team members, the team's communication pattern is an important determinant of team creativity. Based on a sample of 44 NPD teams in eleven companies, this study examines the effects of team‐member communication on team creativity. It is found that both interaction frequency and subgroup‐formation of communication have a negative relationship to team creativity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and further research is indicated.     

Fostering Creativity in New Product Development through Entrepreneurial Decision Making

Research has emphasized the importance of employees' individual entrepreneurial decision making for innovation. In this context, practised creativity as the ability to perceive and exploit creative opportunities, can be regarded as a crucial requirement for employees in new product development. We discuss the application of decision making logic as an important antecedent of practised creativity in new product development. We survey 219 employees from new product development departments of German product and service firms. Results indicate that the use of entrepreneurial decision making logic positively impacts practised creativity; comparably we find indicators that the use of causal decision making logic negatively influences creativity. The effects significantly depend on the moderating role of uncertainty. The results contribute to the literature of creativity, entrepreneurship and new product development by theoretically and empirically revealing effectuation as antecedent to practised creativity. The results open promising avenues for future research and allow the derivation of valuable guidelines for practitioners. Aligning the new product development process to support employees' entrepreneurial decision making may help generating practised creativity.     

“StoryWeb”: A storytelling‐based knowledge‐sharing application among multiple stakeholders

The research objective of this paper is to develop a storytelling‐based knowledge‐sharing application that enables users to co‐create their own stories for both individuals and groups. To address this, a design science research methodology was applied for elucidating users' requirements. As empirical evidence, a case study was conducted on the children's book industry to synthesize a knowledge‐sharing design application named “StoryWeb”. Usability tests were conducted to reconfigure users' feedback and suggestions after two StoryWeb prototypes were developed. This study makes three main contributions. First, it empirically tests individual's or group's creativity and co‐creation by a view of knowledge sharing. Second, it methodologically applies a design thinking approach into a knowledge‐sharing study. Third, it also practically suggests feasible guidelines for the creativity and innovation research community on which features of storytelling‐based applications can be configured.     

Do Intelligent Leaders Make a Difference? The Effect of a Leader's Emotional Intelligence on Followers' Creativity

This research investigates the connection between emotional intelligence (EI) and creativity. This was studied by exploring: (i) an association between leaders' EI and their followers' creative output; (ii) an association between six sub‐dimensions of EI and creativity; and (iii) a mediating role of climate in the link between EI and creativity. Two questionnaires (one for leaders and one for employees) were used to collect data in a hospital. Sixty‐six usable leader‐employee dyads were collected. The findings confirmed a positive relationship between leaders' EI and employees' creativity. At an EI's sub‐dimensions level, the current research showed an association between creativity, on one hand, and self‐encouragement and understanding of own emotions, on the other. Finally, no mediating effect of climate was observed. The absence of a mediating effect is interesting, since it suggests a direct link between leaders' EI and employees' creativity, regardless of the climate. This is important, since it calls attention to the paramount role of leaders in shaping individual and organizational behaviours as far as creativity is concerned. The paper also discusses implications for management and practice.     

A business maturity model of software product line engineering

In the recent past, software product line engineering has become one of the most promising practices in software industry with the potential to substantially increase the software development productivity. Software product line engineering approach spans the dimensions of business, architecture, software engineering process and organization. The increasing popularity of software product line engineering in the software industry necessitates a process maturity evaluation methodology. Accordingly, this paper presents a business maturity model of software product line, which is a methodology to evaluate the current maturity of the business dimension of a software product line in an organization. This model examines the coordination between product line engineering and the business aspects of software product line. It evaluates the maturity of the business dimension of software product line as a function of how a set of business practices are aligned with product line engineering in an organization. Using the model presented in this paper, we conducted two case studies and reported the assessment results. This research contributes towards establishing a comprehensive and unified strategy for a process maturity evaluation of software product lines.     

Unplugging Evolutionary Algorithms: an experiment on human-algorithmic creativity

Understanding and emulating human creativity is a key factor when developing computer based algorithms devoted to art. This paper presents a new evolutionary approach to art and creativity aimed at comprehending human principles and motivations, behaviors and procedures from an evolutionary point of view. The results, and the collective artwork described, is the product of a new methodology derived from the Interactive Evolutionary Algorithm (IEA), that allowed a team of artists to collaborate following evolutionary procedures in a number of generations while providing interesting information from the creative process developed. Instead of relegating artists to merely evaluating the output of a standard IEA, we provided them with the fundamentals, operators and ideas extracted from IEAs, and asked them to apply those principles while creating a collective artwork. Artists thus focused on their inner creative process with an evolutionary perspective, providing insights that hopefully will allow us to improve future versions of EAs when devoted to art. This paper describes the methodology behind the work and the experiment performed, and analyzes the collective work generated, that eventually became GECCO 2013 Art Design and Creativity Competition award-winning artwork in Amsterdam.     

Digital games as creativity enablers for children

This article deals with the issue of creativity and the way this can be supported within technology-enhanced learning experiments. Drawing on a long-term research project in the field of games-based learning, the article describes the methodology adopted during the in-field experiments carried out with the aim of developing young children's creativity. The results of the study, which are presented and discussed, confirm the hypothesis that digital tools can contribute to fostering creativity. As a matter of fact, the analysis of the available data showed that during the 3-year study, students' creative skills and attitudes appreciably increased, in particular those related to figuring out and enacting original solution strategies for the digital games at hand.     

A framework for understanding creativity in requirements engineering

Creativity is important in the discovery and analysis of user and business requirements to achieve innovative uses of information and communication technologies. This paper builds a theoretical framework for understanding creativity in requirements engineering. The framework provides a systematic means of understanding creativity in requirements engineering and comprises five elements (product, process, domain, people and socio-organisational context). The framework provides researchers with a sound basis for exploring how the five elements of creativity can be incorporated within RE methods and techniques to support creative requirements engineering. It provides practitioners with a systematic means of creating environments that nurture and develop creative people, cognitive and collaborative processes and products.     

三级低碳供应链联合减排及宣传促销微分博弈研究

低碳环境下,研究供应商、制造商与零售商组成的三级供应链联合减排及宣传促销微分博弈问题.首先,通过两次成本加成,考虑产品需求受产品减排量、零售商宣传促销努力及产品零售价格的综合影响,得到供应链分散决策与集中决策情形下的动态均衡策略及减排量的最优轨迹.然后,通过数值算例及灵敏度分析比较两种情形下的结果,研究发现:无论分散决策还是集中决策,减排量,产品批发价,供应商、制造商、零售商的努力水平都随时间逐渐增加至某一稳定值,但集中决策的稳定值大于分散决策相应的稳定值;随着供应商、制造商各自的减排努力对产品减排率的影响系数及零售商的宣传促销努力对产品需求的影响系数的增大,减排量、产品批发价、供应链成员努力水平、供应链成员利润、供应链总利润都会增加;集中决策的供应链总利润总是大于分散决策的供应链总利润.最后,对集中决策总利润用多人联盟博弈的多目标决策合作博弈方法进行分配,实现了供应链系统整体绩效的提升.     

Entrepreneurial Leadership and New Ventures: Creativity in Entrepreneurial Teams

This study tests the view that new venture's innovative capability is influenced by the interaction of a lead entrepreneur's leadership and his or her entrepreneurial team members' creativity, as measured by the creation of patents. Focusing on 112 entrepreneurial teams in Taiwan's high‐tech new ventures, the findings suggest that lead entrepreneurs who are risk‐taking, pro‐active and innovative can stimulate their entrepreneurial team members' creativity. Moreover, new venture's innovative capability can be improved by the joint contribution of higher entrepreneurial leadership and more creativity in entrepreneurial teams. The findings also imply that the contingent impact of creativity in teams on the leadership–innovation relationship needs to be considered.     

A structured methodology for implementing engineering data management

One of the most significant positive effects on product and process development in recent years has been the application of data management techniques. Engineering data management or product data management is the most promising one. The implementation of engineering data management is heavily dependent on the engineering process and involves the technologies of management, engineering, and information. However, as there is no commonly acceptable approach and methodologies for implementing engineering data management, it’s implementation becomes a bottleneck.This paper presents a structured methodology for the implementation of engineering data management. The approach consists of a series of steps, from business and engineering process analysis, modeling and reengineering, through system design and modeling, to system realization.This research will facilitate engineering process improvement and the planning, design and implementation of engineering data management. Consequently, it will help increase product development capability and quality, reduce development cycle time and cost, and hence increase product marketability.     

From Creative Ideas to Innovation Performance: The Role of Assessment Criteria

This article aims to make idea screening studies even more relevant to innovation management by coupling a set of assessment criteria so that they can be used for identifying early product ideas with innovation potential. We develop a framework, which integrates the complementary theoretical perspectives from the creativity and innovation literatures. The approach draws novelty and usefulness insights from the creativity literature and combines these with novelty and market potential insights from the innovation literature. The resulting framework encompasses novelty of a product idea and its usefulness to the intended recipients, but with a distinct focus on the value to the firm that can be created through market potential. This set of criteria makes it possible to couple creative ideas for new products directly to potential innovation performance. For the study, industry and market experts made assessments of 106 student‐generated projects; these assessments underline the distinctiveness of the three criteria and support the value of each criterion's independent role in assessing the innovation potential. Two student project cases particularly shed light on the relevance of each criterion and on its unique relationship within the framework.     

Two Kinds of Creativity – But Which Ones?

It is argued that Kirton's theory of styles of creativity is conceptually and methodologically unsound. A solution to the conceptual and methodological dilemmas is offered by way of making a clear‐cut distinction between novelty on the stimulus and novelty on the response side. This distinction is used as a platform for the development of a new taxonomy of different kinds of creativity and intelligent behaviour. A major feature of this new model is the distinction made between proactive and reactive creativity. The implications of this distinction for opening new avenues for a more differentiated assessment of creativity, as well as for the development of a conceptually firmer and more differentiated platform for developing new practical training programmes in creativity are suggested.     

Affective design of products using an audio-based protocol: Application to eyeglass frame

The measurement and understanding of user emotions elicited by product appearance are critical elements of the product development process. This paper proposes a new emotion measurement method, called Auditory Parameter Method. It is a non-verbal technique that uses auditory stimuli (music samples) and association tests for evaluating a set of products, given by their pictures. From user-tests, it provides an assessment of these products according to a series of emotional dimensions. We present the methodological framework used to build the links between user's emotional responses and geometrical features of the products. The method is described on an application case, an eyeglass frame. Analysis of Variance models are employed to examine how various shape factors influence users' emotional responses. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our protocol, we compare the proposed method with the conventional Semantic Differential using Principal Component Analysis and Generalized Procrustes Analysis. The new protocol demonstrates interesting qualities for collecting the intuitive emotions of users and for providing a discriminant measurement of emotions. It can also be used by designers to stimulate creativity.     

Product selection in Internet business: a fuzzy approach

In this paper, we propose a methodology which helps customers buy products through the Internet. This procedure takes into account the customer's level of desire in the product attributes, which are normally fuzzy, or in linguistically defined terms. The concept of fuzzy number will be used to measure the degree of similarities of the available products to that of the customer's requirements. The degrees of similarities so obtained over all the attributes give rise to the fuzzy probabilities and hence the fuzzy expected values of availing a product on the Internet as per the customer's requirement. Attribute‐wise the fuzzy expected values are compared with those of the available products on the Internet and the product that is closest to the customer's preference is selected as the best product. The multi‐attribute weighted average method is used here to evaluate and hence to select the best product.     

An integrated product and process development methodology: Concept formulation

Life cycle engineering, or integrated product and process development (IPPD), is a new trend of research and application in industry and academia. In our previous work, a generic framework was proposed to provide a means for an integrated consideration of the performance optimization issues in a product’s lifetime. Based on this generic framework, this paper proposes and presents an integrated product and process development methodology. Important concepts of the methodology are introduced, and an application procedure is provided to illustrate the systematic application of the methodology to real product and process development. Finally, we provide a brief report of our application of the methodology to personal computer development.     

Influence of green creativity on organizations: A case study from the perspectives of leaders and subordinates

The sustainability framework has a strong influence on the policies, practices and procedures of companies. Green creativity plays a pivotal role in the development of initiatives and innovations for the environmental pillar of sustainability. Based on a survey applied to a Portuguese company with an accredited environmental management system (N = 146), the findings reveal that green creativity is influenced in different ways when analysed from distinct perspectives. The leader's green creativity is positively influenced by the subordinate's green self-efficacy and personal identification with the leader, whereas the subordinate's green creativity is positively influenced by their green passion and green self-efficacy, and the leaders' green creativity. This study shows that green creativity develops differentially according to distinct job positions and expectations that in practice must be complementary and synergistic for its effective development.